Charles Dawes gave his autographed photograph to his “friend” Wilson McCarthy, who acted like a hero worshiper of Dawes when he approved the unprecedented bailout package for the Dawes bank. (Courtesy, Utah State Historical Society)

President Herbert Hoover after a good day of trout fishing. Hoover personally directed the bailout of the Dawes bank by telephone from his fishing camp on the Rapidan River. (Courtesy, Library of Congress)

Jesse Jones, chairman of the RFC, and his nephew, George A. Butler, who was the lawyer and head of Jones’s reorganized properties, working in the RFC’s Washington office. (Courtesy, Library of Congress)

Jesse Jones, as chairman of the RFC, approved loans to the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad and then directed the railroad company to hire Wilson McCarthy as its president. The photograph, a gift to McCarthy and his wife, was signed, “for my friends Wilson and Minerva McCarthy with great…

Owen Young (right), chairman of General Electric and partner of Charles Dawes, used his considerable influence to ensure the bailout of the Dawes bank. Young and Dawes (left), chairman of Central Republic Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, waiting to testify before the Senate committee investigating the Samuel Insull fiasco….

Depositors’ run on John Walsh’s Chicago National Bank in 1905. Walsh, who was the partner of Charles Dawes and Samuel Insull in several gas deals, served three years at the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth for issuing fraudulent call reports, which concealed the massive insider abuse at his failed bank….

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Asking the superintendent to act
(Tribune archive photo)
A crowd of children and the unemployed marched to the office of Chicago Public Schools Superintendent William Bogan demanding free food in March 1932. During the Great Depression, teachers worked at reduced wages or went without pay in part because people were unable to pay their taxes.